February, 2017, Part 6, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Real Life Hardship Stories As A Result Of Obama Care

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money”to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Today we will focus on some distressing and sad stories of real Americans sufferings as a result of Obama Care, the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. The source of these real stories is the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

Through their eyes and experiences you will see what we have been discussing in this blog for the past few years: higher costs, lower choices, less job opportunities, loss of access to preferred doctors, etc. Anyone who thinks Obama Care is still a good thing after reading their stories is delusional.

ROSE - PENNSYLVANIA: I can not believe what has happened to my health insurance at work. Last year it cost me about 85.00 a month with 80% coverage. This year it doubled! I now pay 171.00 and for less coverage, as with a very high deductible! When I went to the Doctors just recently, they paid only 0.896 cents. Last year they covered the cost at 80%, so I do not know how they calculate or what my deductible is! I have to get blood work done, sure it will cost a lot more this year! When I called my benefits office they claim it's because of the new laws. Tried to cancel my insurance due to the fact I can not afford to pay them, and they claim company policy I can not unless I have a different insurance or leave the job. Why shouldn't I be able to get rid of something I can not afford?

TIM - VIRGINIA: From an NPR report with John Ydstie: 

YDSTIE: Tim Blanchard(ph), a law student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville liked the $46 a month Humana policy he had, too. It's being discontinued and he doesn't know yet whether he'll be able to get it back.

TIM BLANCHARD: I certainly think that if the old policy was available at anything close to the price that I'm currently paying, I would stick with it in a heartbeat.

YDSTIE: Blanchard knows he got the old policy cheaply because he's young and healthy. But he thinks that's fair.

BLANCHARD: Me having to pay for, you know, people who don't take care of themselves, people who are old, people who are sick, I mean, that's really a hidden tax.

CYNTHIA - VERMONT: I not only have to pay a higher premium, but I can not afford the deductable!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PATRICIA - MINNESOTA: In order to keep my monthly payment the same, I had to raise my annual deductible from $3,000.00 to $5,000.00. I also lost the three times each year that I could go to the doctor for a $30.00 co-pay. I also lost the flat fee I paid on prescriptions of $10.00 for generic and $25.00 for non-generic. These items I now pay from dollar one. This conceivably could cost me a lot of money each year.

AARON - LOUISIANA: Scalise extended his invitation to Aaron Hirsh, 44, an Information Technology (IT) consultant, who says his previous health care coverage was cancelled and that the replacement policy offered by the insurer comes with higher premiums -- from $568 a month to $1,019. Hirsh said the policy was cancelled because it didn't meet the minimum coverage requirements of the new law, and while the president has said such policies could continue for another year, he hasn't gotten that option from his insurer.

Hirsh said he is still shopping, and will look at the Affordable Care Act's exchanges to see if they offer a lower cost option. The new higher cost policy, he said, has coverage for maternity care that he and his wife, parents of two children, feel they don't need, along with something he likes -- dental coverage for the kids. The dental coverage will provide savings, Hirsh said, though "it won't make it a wash by any means" with what he was paying previously.

MARK - ALASKA: [Mark Knapp] and his wife Angel own a custom knife shop in Fairbanks. Until last December, they were happy paying $750 a month for health insurance from Premera. But because the plan didn’t meet Affordable Care Act requirements, it was canceled. President Obama then extended many canceled plans for a year, but the Knapp’s plan didn’t qualify:

“So we decided we’d shop around.”

On healthcare.gov, Knapp found a similar plan to the one the couple had for $1260 a month. The subsidy they qualified for brought the cost down to about $600. But Knapp says he and his wife didn’t feel right about accepting a subsidy:

“It doesn’t really fall under affordable health care to me, even though I wasn’t going to pay it all, somebody was going to have to pay it for me.”

So instead, the Knapps found a new policy through a small business organization they belong too. The monthly premium is $850:

“So that’s about $100 a month more than what we were getting it for with Premera.”

It’s also $250 more than what they would be required to pay on healthcare.gov. The plan doesn’t comply with the Affordable Care Act, so it’s scheduled to be canceled at the end of this year. After that, Knapp isn’t sure what he and his wife will do, but he says they won’t ever feel right about accepting a subsidy

TOM: My premiums were $399 a month for my family. Cheapest plan with the same deductible that qualifies for ObamaCare is $743/month.

JANETTE - CALIFORNIA: The chiropractor who expects her premiums to rise, the 60s-something company manager who has to pay for maternity coverage, the Simi Valley contractor and many others who make at least $46,000 a year -- they all pound away at the same rhythm.

They say the middle class is once again getting tattooed, this time by President Barack Obama's health care reform.

"However you look at it, the son of a gun lied to us," said Janette Ramsey, a Bakersfield business owner with a weekend home in Ventura. She's losing her current coverage and expects to pay $50 more a month for a policy with nearly double the deductible.

"I think it's an abomination," she said. "... I'm going to pay more and get 100 percent less."

STEVE - MASSACHUSETTS: Premiums went up 104% overnight so had to decrease coverage substantially to keep similar premium. Not surprised at all tho, exactly as expected. Much higher cost for lower quality service.

REBECCA - COLORADO: From Complete Colorado:

– a health exchange navigator in Colorado told a woman with a cancelled health plan she’ll pay more in monthly premiums to continue seeing her long-time physician. At least $140 more a month

– or $1,680 a year.

Ryan previously paid a premium of $375 a month from “CoverColorado,” a government-run plan intended to provide insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. However, in the wake of the new rules from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Cover Colorado and all of its nearly 14.000 plans were terminated.

Replacing her plan with the least expensive option through the “Connect for Health Colorado” site could save Ryan $15 a month, but would also require her to switch doctors.

However, choosing a plan that allows her to continue seeing her doctor, who has treated her for approximately the last nine years, will cost her $515 a month, $140 more than Ryan was previously paying.

KELLY - GEORGIA: After losing our home to foreclosure, I tried to comply with the "Affordable" Health Care Act by finding insurance. What a farce! I have been unemployed so long I don't even "count" on the rolls as unemployed OR as a displaced worker, because I can't collect unemployment. My husband is on Medicare as he is semi retired. We are in terrible financial straights, and I was eligible for medicaid, according to my income. HOWEVER, I kept getting bounced to the ObamaCare site instead. The best I could do was $160 a month payment, which I CANNOT pay, with a $6,000 deductible! So, if I actually wanted ACCESS to healthcare, I would first need $6000, which I don't have. I have serious problems and cant see a doctor or get the medical scans I need. Also, I think it is DESPICABLE that my child and grand kids will be stuck with the bill for this

That’s enough bad news for today. As you can see, the high levels numbers that we often discuss do relate to real life hardships for millions of Americans across the country, as illustrated by these stories listed above. Anyone who tells you that Obama Care is working is a fool and an ignorant fool at that. More unfolding disasters from this wretched piece of legislation next month.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2016, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Personal Stories of Stress and Hassles of Americans' Dealings Withg Obama Care

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

This week we have be reviewing the latest unfolding disasters from the worst piece of legislation ever written by Washington. Today we will focus on personal stories of Americans from across the country who have had their lives and health care disrupted by Obama Care. The source of this anguish is the website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

MARJORIE - NEW YORK: I lost my favorite doctor and I got a notice that my plan will be changing in 2014, but no explanation.

This is absurd that this has been allowed to occur in the United States.

JULIE - NEW MEXICO: Last June, Birch received a letter from Lovelace Insurance warning her that her coverage would be terminated. However, it told her to wait for more information before she did anything. The months rolled past and no phone call came. She paid her premium in December, assuming everything was sorted out. However, on January 4, 2014, she was told her insurance was cancelled and she would have to log onto the New Mexico healthcare exchange. So she did.

After spending two hours filling personal information into the ever-growing ACA database, the system stopped her from enrolling her children. It needed to determine if her sons were eligible for Medicaid. The error message promised that a state representative would contact her, but no one has. When she tried to call, the wait was 45 minutes.

Birch wasn’t eligible for the marketplace’s Platinum plan, but the next best thing – the Gold plan – offered her comparable care for $519.23 a month with a $3,000 deductible—an increase of over $175 a month with no coverage for her children caught in Medicaid limbo.

Her frustration escalated not because the cost increased and her children were uninsured, but because none of the plans let her keep her primary care or orthopedic doctors.

"This is just downright unacceptable," Birch said. "You develop relationships [with doctors] for a reason."

RICHARD - MONTANA: I'm currently paying $229 per month on a plan from Humana that does exactly what I want. It'll keep me from going broke if something bad happens.

That Humana plan does not comply with ObamaCare. So it will be cancelled at some point. Originally it was scheduled to be cancelled at the end of 2014, now I'm not sure if it will be extended to 2016 or what.

The least expensive policy I could find that complied with Ocare was about $500/mo. and that was for this year. My understanding is that compliant policies for 2015 will be about 20% higher. I hope I can keep the current policy for next year, but I don't know. I am displeased.

MARIANNE - OHIO: Have had affordable insurance my entire life, both individual, and employer based. Now I am uninsured due to the huge premiums and deductible I found on the exchange when I lost my coverage as of 12/31/13. Never has insurance been based on my income and never have I been so devastated to find the premiums for my son and I more than a house payment. Thankfully, I HAD a great affordable plan last year when I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery, chemo and radiation. I am SO VERY fearful of this returning even though the oncologist said I am cured. No insurance and I absolutely cannot afford this. As a young widow who lost my husband to cancer, I am the sole provider and parent to my son. This law is unjust and I am just sick with worry without insurance for the first time in our lives.

TINA - VIRGINIA: From The American Spectator:

In the fall of 2013, Cordova received a memo regarding the company-wide decision that the Cheesecake Factory would no longer offer plans to part-time employees starting in January of 2014—the famed start date for Obamacare coverage. The memo instructed employees to go to the ACA website for new coverage options.

When the Obamacare website went live in October of 2013, Cordova tried and failed to log on every day for the first week. Two weeks later, she was able to access the information she needed. “The cheapest plan was $170 in premiums and it offered way less services. I didn’t qualify for a subsidy,” she recalled.

[. . .] Cordova ended up settling for a non-ACA plan with a $169 premium and slightly higher copays.

KATHY - SOUTH CAROLINA: My husband and I have always paid our own health insurance as he is small business owner. sole proprietor . In Oct 2013 I decided to check for new insurance in hope of cheaper rates since Obamacare was available then. we had been paying over $600 a month for the two of us, over 50, for the past two years at the time. I applied for only me insurance and was quoted $303.... which was good for me.. my husband would use the VA if needed.. tho he never gets sick. I cancelled my other policy..then two weeks after my new $303 policy I received a letter that it would be increased to $598 due to preexisitng conditions. I can not afford this of course so I cancelled and now I am without insurance. I have found that being a self pay person for doctors office is way less than a monthly premium.. I will just be unable to get sick with anything such as cancer, diabetes, heart problems, or an other illness that requires extensive care.. So much for the Obamacare helping this American!

MARLENE - CALIFORNIA: After being promised by Obama that we could keep our present insurance, I soon realized that was just another lie as my insurance was canceled. I am now paying twice the price every month for something "similar" to what I had. Previous I was allowed 5 doctor visits a year for a $40 co-pay. Now I get two visits a year for $50 co-pay per visit. In addition the detectable is so high and the insurance covers so little that I often get a $200-$500 bill after the doctor visit.

ANDREA - NEBRASKA: Reporter: Insurance companies cancelled millions on peoples' policies because those policies did not meet the new Obamacare requirements. We did find an Omaha family who did not lose theirs, but will pay a lot more.

Reporter: She currently pays about $440 a month, but starting January 1st her rates will increase to $726. In the letter, Blue Cross and Blue Shield stated that her current plan didn't meet the Affordable Care Act standards.

Andrea: Now we have inpatient substance abuse care.. Now we have  maternity. I already made the choice that I'm done, I have two children, and I'm done with my family.

SHARYL - TEXAS: I have always had health insurance...I was covered by my parents' policy until I got married, through my husband's employer for the 25 year duration of my marriage, and through my own employer since my divorce three years ago. I lost my job in November 2013, and for the first time in my life, I had to seek out a personal medical insurance policy for myself. Thank heavens for Obamacare...right? Not exactly…

Because I was a stay-at-home wife and mother for 25 years, I had no established career history to lean on after my divorce. I was lucky to land my first job so quickly after my divorce became final in 2011, but without any real work experience, I'm having no luck finding a replacement job now. I'm a 48-year-old, moderately-educated woman with no job history competing with masses of highly-skilled -- and younger -- job seekers in a ferociously competitive job market. No matter how smart or skilled I am, I just can't compete... so while I'm still job-hunting and scheduled to return to college this Fall to improve my "viability", I'm now forced to seek out a personal insurance policy to avoid breaking the law.

I have four children, aged 18-26, the three youngest of whom are currently attending college. These three still live with me and receive most of their support from me while in school. They all work part-time and use their earnings to pay for their cars and gas and to offset some of their out-of-pocket tuition costs. Thankfully, they're still covered under their father's employer-sponsored health insurance plan. I receive no child support for them, and they receive little-to-no financial assistance from their father (other than the court-ordered insurance). I receive a very reasonable amount of monthly alimony which is what we now live on exclusively. I fall into that strange middle-class black hole that seems to exist in our country's financial structure. I make too much to qualify for any assistance and far too little to qualify for the tax breaks and other financial opportunities that the wealthy enjoy. I live paycheck-to-paycheck like most people. It takes every penny I have each month to support my (modest) home and my children's education.

So when I tried to purchase health insurance through the healthcare.gov website, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I qualify for a small subsidy towards my premiums...until I actually saw the cost of the plans and the crazy-high deductibles that were available in my price range. I have an auto-immune condition requiring monthly maintenance medications which typically cost me around $350/month, without insurance, plus office visits. If I were to divert those funds towards health insurance costs, I would need to have immediate use of the coverage to afford office visits and medication. But the deductibles are all so high that I would be paying $400-or-more each month on the premiums yet still have to pay several hundred dollars per month for my treatment until my deductible is met. I can't do both...I am forced to choose between obeying the law by paying for insurance that I can't use or breaking the law so that I can spend that money on my actual healthcare needs. If I were employed, I would have no issues. As I mentioned, my alimony just covers all of my monthly bills and the other living expenses for myself and my children...my job earnings would put me in a great place financially.

It's tragic that middle-class Americans have been reduced to such restrictive options. I want to pay my own way in life...government assistance is not something I've ever needed or wanted. But when I need just a little bit of help, it's not available to me. I pay my own bills, and I pay a significant amount in taxes each year. When do I get a break? I'm so tired of standing in line behind people at the grocery store as they pay for steaks and other items with food stamps... items that I can't afford to buy. I'm tired of hearing about the vacations and shopping sprees enjoyed by people that I know for a fact receive Medicaid and other government assistance...luxuries that I can't afford as a self-payer. I don't mind doing without, but I greatly resent paying my taxes each year knowing that the recipients of my tax dollars are living a better life than my children and I are.

Obama, just give me a little back so I can take care of my healthcare responsibilities without breaking the law!

SUSAN - FLORIDA: Our policy last year went from 600.00 a month to 700.00 a month, then we just received a new letter a week ago saying that our policy is going from 700.00 a month to 1050.00 a month, plus raising our deductable from 10,000 to 12,000.00 a year. This start in Jan. We must repeal Obamacare.

There you have it: higher premiums, higher deductibles, current policies cancelled, access to favored doctors terminated, etc. Worst piece of legislation ever passed. More unfolding disasters next month.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

May, 2016, Part 3, The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: A Smoker Cessation Component That Ceases Nothing and Sories of Heartbreak From Across the Country

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements its rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating healthcare costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government healthcare programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high healthcare costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our healthcare costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused insurance premiums, deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above.

Today we will finish up the latest disasters from Obama Care and spend some time reviewing the personal stress, trauma, and expense that Obama Care has introduced into the lives of our friends, family members, and neighbors:

1) One of the potentially good things Obama Care said it wanted to do was to financially penalize smokers in order to nudge them towards stopping their smoking habit and get healthier. It was a good idea but as always, a horrible approach to resolving the issue.

As we have discussed many times, Obama failed in his healthcare legislation because he tried to solve a public health problem with a bad insurance approach. His plan was to force smokers to pay more for Obama Care insurance policies but the law has no way of checking if Obama Care policy owners who were smokers were actually being honest. According to a recent article by Kaiser Health Services:

• Independent surveys estimate that 17% of Idaho residents are smokers but only 3% of Idaho Obama Care policy owners say they are smokers.
• In Kentucky, more than one in four state residents smoke but only 11% of Obama Care policy holders in the state are paying the smokers’ surcharge on their insurance premiums.
• In Minnesota, 15% of state residents smoke but only 5% of Obama Care policy holders in the state are stating they are smokers and paying the surcharge.
• While 17% of all Americans are smokers, only 7% of Obama Care policy holders nationwide are paying the smoker surcharge.

So we have either a major statistical fluke or massive lying by Obama Care smokers which defeats the whole purpose of Obama Care, to get smokers to stop smoking by forcing them to pay more for insurance. Rather than focusing on getting smokers to actually quit smoking with smoking cessation strategies, we end up with millions of Americans turning into liars to save some money and doing nothing to stop smoking.

As a result of this lack of common sense, non-smokers who have Obama Care policies will end up paying more for their insurance coverage going forward since the Obama Care mechanics never found a way to make smokers pay for their probable higher healthcare and medical costs down the road. Just another unfolding disaster.

2) Let’s finish this month’s review of the unfolding disasters of Obama Care of personal stories of horror that Obama Care spawned. We have done this before in other Obama Care posts based on stories of real people from the following website:

www.ourhealthcarestories.com

You will see many of the problems that we have discussed before: higher premium costs, higher deductible costs, more narrow doctor and hospital networks, loss of access to favorite doctors and hospitals, loss of insurance from their employees, etc. This is the reality that Obama Care has caused at the individual and family level (My emphasis added):

ED -OHIO: Even after the administration made hundreds of improvements to the troubled Obamacare website, many people are still encountering difficulty. Ed Anderson, a graphic designer from Columbus, Ohio, who was recently bumped from his wife’s insurance policy for reasons relating to the new law, discovered that his family’s monthly premiums will double even if he chooses the most inexpensive plan available to him through the new federal insurance exchange in his state.

Anderson said he and his wife currently pay a monthly premium of $460 through Blue Cross Blue Shield. But now that he can no longer stay on his wife’s plan, he will have to get his own coverage. The most inexpensive option would cost him a $428 monthly premium. And he and his wife can’t qualify for a federal subsidy because their joint income exceeds the cutoff. The new insurance policy will cost the Andersons an extra $5,000 a year in premiums alone.

“When you’re trying to keep your house, pay car insurance and put your kid through college, it’s tough,” Anderson said. Everything we do is going to be affected by this. Getting groceries, eating out. Going anywhere. It’s just crazy.”

MARCUS - SOUTH DAKOTA: The problem is that millions of Americans, like me, simply cannot afford insurance. The estimates for mid-level plans by the Kaiser Family Foundation (I’d check directly on Healthcare.gov, but the site has crashed every day so far since Oct. 1), show that premiums for my family of five will cost almost $300 a month after subsidies. When it comes to my family’s budget, you might as well be asking me for $3,000,000 a month. There is no way that my family can afford to throw away that much money every month for a plan that still has a high deductible.

[. . .] My point is that we can throw all the insurance money we want at health care, but it won’t solve the problem of getting Americans (especially low-income Americans) the medical care we need. Until the cost of health care is dealt with, the individual mandate will just be another financial burden weakening an already-fragile working class.

JANETTE - CALIFORNIA: The chiropractor who expects her premiums to rise, the 60s-something company manager who has to pay for maternity coverage, the Simi Valley contractor and many others who make at least $46,000 a year -- they all pound away at the same rhythm.

They say the middle class is once again getting tattooed, this time by President Barack Obama's health care reform. "However you look at it, the son of a gun lied to us," said Janette Ramsey, a Bakersfield business owner with a weekend home in Ventura. She's losing her current coverage and expects to pay $50 more a month for a policy with nearly double the deductible.

"I think it's an abomination," she said. "... I'm going to pay more and get 100 percent less."

ERIN - MASSACHUSETTS: I lost coverage with doctors in my area. It's not right and it's not fair. The current federal government and their policies are detrimental to the health of my business and my family.

STEVE - WASHINGTON: My out of pocket co-pays have almost tripled... :{ !!!

LYNN - ILLINOIS: Thanks to OBAMACARE many of us will lose our employee health insurance due to the cost rose 60% in 2 years. Starting 2015 we will be left to find our own coverage.

DR. DANIEL CRAVIOTTO - CALIFORNIA: Daniel is a physician who wrote an op-ed in WSJ expressing his frustration with ObamaCare: 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services dictates that we must use an electronic health record (EHR) or be penalized with lower reimbursements in the future. There are "meaningful use" criteria whereby the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services tells us as physicians what we need to include in the electronic health record or we will not be subsidized the cost of converting to the electronic system and we will be penalized by lower reimbursements.

Across the country, doctors waste precious time filling in unnecessary electronic-record fields just to satisfy a regulatory measure. I personally spend two hours a day dictating and documenting electronic health records just so I can be paid and not face a government audit. Is that the best use of time for a highly trained surgical specialist?

[. . .] 

Meanwhile, our Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements have significantly declined, let alone kept up with inflation. In orthopedic surgery, for example, Medicare reimbursement for a total knee replacement decreased by about 68% between 1992 and 2010, based on the value of 1992 dollars. How can this be? Don't doctors have control over what they charge for their services? For the most part, no. Our medical documentation is pored over and insurers and government then determine the appropriate level of reimbursement.

I don't know about other physicians but I am tired—tired of the mandates, tired of outside interference, tired of anything that unnecessarily interferes with the way I practice medicine. No other profession would put up with this kind of scrutiny and coercion from outside forces. The legal profession would not. The labor unions would not. We as physicians continue to plod along and take care of our patients while those on the outside continue to intrude and interfere with the practice of medicine.

That will do it for this month’s Obama Care disasters. A smoker penalty that penalizes no one and stories of hardship and heartbreak across the country because of what Obama Care has done to millions of Americans. Still no doubt in my mind that this is the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. More disasters sure to come by next month.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

December, 2015, Part 2,The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Care: Obama's Media Allies Turn Against HIm, Unhealthier Eating, and Persona lObama Care Heartbreak Stories

Every month for years now we have had to discuss how bad Obama Care is turning out to be under the continuing theme, “the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care.” This month is no different. As the legislation continues to march through America, driving up health care and health insurance prices as it serves as dead weight on economic growth, it cements it rightful place as the worst piece of legislation Washington has ever produced.

It never had a chance to be successful since it really never addressed the underlying root causes of our ever increasing health costs in the country:

• Americans eat too much of the wrong kind of food, resulting in obscenely high obesity rates for the country.
• Our food chain is infested with overdoses of high fructose corn syrup, salt, and other unhealthy additives.
• Americans smoke too much.
• Americans do not exercise enough.
• The country is in serious need of health care tort reform.
• Barriers to insurance company competition across state lines need to come down.
• Obama Care never “followed the money” to find out who is actually profiting from the ever escalating health care costs in this country and how to get those factors under control.
• Obama Care never got the immense amount of fraud and abuse in current government health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, under control in order to save money to efficiently fund other government health care initiatives.
• Obama Care never put serious research money towards curing the major diseases that drive high health care costs such as high frequency cancers and dementia type diseases.

You cannot resolve any problem unless you understand and address the underlying root causes. No difference here but with a big exception: Obama Care legislation never addressed these listed root causes and thus, has no chance of ever being successful.

But it is not just missing the root causes of our health care costs that makes Obama Care so horrible. It resulted in millions of Americans losing access to their favored doctors, hospitals, and insurance policies. It has caused deductibles and co-pays to escalate substantially. It will likely add trillions of dollars to the national debt. It has exposed millions of Americans to higher than necessary identity theft chances. It has created government bureaucracies that are wastefully spending taxpayer wealth and being exploited by criminal elements. It has stifled economic growth and job creation.

These are just a sample of the types of idiocy that we have been reviewing for the past several years in this blog relative to Obama Care., To read those past posts, just enter the phrase, “the unfolding disaster,” in the search box above. Today we continue with this month’s update of Obama Care that we began yesterday, the worst piece of Washington legislation ever passed.

1) The Daily Beast will never be mistaken for Fox News. It is a left leaning, Obama loving entity that really gets your attention when it criticizes anything related to the Obama administration. But that is exactly what it did in a December 2, 2015 article related to the problems with Obama Care. We have previously pointed out many of these problems and disasters but it is worth noting when someone like the Daily Beast finally acknowledges the obvious:

• According to the Daily Beast article: “The President’s signature domestic policy, his namesake health care law, is doing very poorly.”
• It mentions that the largest health insurer in the country, UnitedHealth, has publicly stated that it might stop participating in Obama Care do to financial losses.
• If companies like UnitedHealth start to leave the program the remaining insurers are likely to raise rates for their policies even quicker.
• This possibility is made more likely since the insurers are worried they may not get Federal taxpayer bailout money to ease their financial pains.
• According to the Daily Beast: “At root, the problem stems from the fact that it has turned out to be far more difficult to get young, healthy people to sign up for plans in the exchanges, and the population is therefore older and sicker than insurers had expected and the Obama administration had predicted.”
• Wellmark of Iowa, the largest insurer in the state of Iowa, has reported that Obama Care policy holders use significantly more health and medical services for more chronic and critical diseases and illnesses than the company expected.
• Not surprisingly, many Obama Care customers are “playing the system,” a strategy that Obama Care critics accurately predicted years ago. According to Wellmark: “There were 135 members [Wellmark Obama Care customers] who signed up for coverage, received several million dollars in health care services, and then terminated their coverage. Wellmark received only approximately 10 percent in premiums to cover those members’ health care claims.”
• The Obama administration admitted in October that rather than attaining 20 million Obama Care customers by 2016 it will attain only about half that many, a massive 50% miss.

Again, we have covered many of these disasters previously. This review is important because it is from a corner of the media world that is almost always pro-Obama on everything.

2) An article by J.K. Wall from December 1, 2015 on the Affluent Advisor website pointed out how healthcare regulations and bureaucracies were out of control and driving up health industry costs. The premise of the article is that as the government imposes more and more regulations on the industry. more resources from the industry have to be devoted to fulfilling the requirements of the regulations:

• From 1990 to 2012, while overall healthcare industry jobs grew by 75% only one out of every 20 of those new jobs was filled by a real doctor.
• This left the country with a ratio of one real doctor for every 16 employees in the healthcare industry.
• And even worse, only six of those 16 non-doctors are involved in providing actual health care, the rest are administrators and bureaucrats.
• These numbers are made worse if you add in the lawyers, accountants, and industry consultants to the non-doctor totals.

And Obama Care with its thousands of pages of law and regulations and dozens of new taxes certainly added to this craziness where healthcare dollars are used to fulfill regulations rather than being used to heal Americans.

3) A recent article on the Political Outcast website by Joe Scudder on December 5, 2015 had an interesting take on how Obama Care might actually be causing Americans to eat more poorly, an exact opposite behavior that the law would want to create. Restaurants operate on very thin margins, the difference between being profitable and staying in business and unprofitable and going out of business is very narrow.

Thus, when a stupid law like Obama Care comes along and forces businesses to pay their employees more in the form of mandatory health care benefits or fine those businesses for not doing so, it places incredible hardships on restaurant businesses and their thin profit margins. Restaurants are trying to cope with this added financial burden in a number of ways including putting an Obama Care surcharge on on their menus and pricing, eliminating tipping while jacking up their prices, or just raising their prices in an attempt to cover the government mandated healthcare costs.

In whatever approach a particular restaurant takes, the bottom line to the customers of that restaurant is that they will be paying more to dine out at that establishment as a result of Obama Care. Combine this reality with the reality that many Americans have less disposable income because their Obama Care premiums and deductibles keep going up. Thus, we are likely to find that when American dine out in the future, they will likely be forced to choose less expensive and less healthy, i.e. fast food, options to fulfill their dining out experience. 

And fast food is never a substitute for healthy food. Thus, it is highly likely that Obama Care has already had and will continue to have a detrimental effect on America’s eating habits, the exact opposite of what should be happening if we want Americans to be healthier, which would reduce healthcare costs.

4) As we often do in this series, let’s end today’s discussion with real life horror stories on how Obama Care has disrupted Americans' lives from across the country. The source of today’s heartbreak's comes from the website, www.ourhealthcarestories.com:

SUSAN, FLORIDA: Our policy last year went from 600.00 a month to 700.00 a month, then we just received a new letter a week ago saying that our policy is going from 700.00 a month to 1050.00 a month, plus raising our deductable from 10,000 to 12,000.00 a year. This start in Jan. We must repeal Obamacare.

LARRY, OHIO: I just retired, a few days ago received the letter from our insurance provider that Obamacare requirements have kicked in.

Current cost $ 636.00 month New cost $ 1057.00 month

Current deductible $ 7,000 New deductible $12,000

Current out of pocket $ 7,000 New out of pocket $ 12,350

Effective 8/1/14

This is my retirement gift from Obama & the democrats, an extra cost of $ 5050.00 per year for insurance coverage I don't want or need. I am very happy with my current coverage. There is no way this is Constitutional.

RENAY, WASHINGTON: Our insurance has DOUBLED! My husband is self employed and we have ALWAYS had insurance we bought on the open market, meaning we don't get it subsidized by an employer or government. We had a plan with a high deductible and low monthly cost because it worked perfectly for us. Of course, we didn't get to keep our insurance if we liked it (we were lied to by Obama) and our insurance didn't go down $2500. (we were lied to by Obama). Our insurance went from $500/month to $988/month. Our deductible went from $10,000. to $12,000. and with less coverage than we had before.

When Obama realized that he was caught in his lie and started handing out waivers to 'allow' us to keep our old insurance, I called our state insurance commissioner and said Obama said we could keep it. His office said they were not going to and just keep on as they were. I had looked at the exchanges and noticed that every insurance plan sold was almost EXACTLY the same in price. I also mentioned this to the insurance commissioner office that it didn't look like competition but more like price fixing and racketeering.

Higher premium costs, higher deductible costs, higher out of pocket costs, loss of access to current insurance plans, unhealthier eating habits, unhealthy insurer financials, etc. The disasters just keep on unfolding from the worst piece of legislation ever passed by Washington. More disasters tomorrow.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w